Struggling without a script?

 

Richard Hanania isn´t a scholar of genetics or demographics, obviously, but he does make some interesting observations and reflections here. The bottom line is that East Asians are genetically primed to be conformists, and therefore "struggle without a script" when social conformity comes unglued. Which may explain their extremely low birth rates, for instance.  

Why Asia stopped having kids

The East Asian package

Realsocialism möter senkapitalism

 

Ger en helt ny innebörd åt Margaret Thatchers uttalande "the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people´s money". Ja, det verkar som att järnladyn hade fel! 

Vi skulle även kunna säga att realsocialismen möter senkapitalismen...

Nordkorea slog till på två minuter: Världshistoriens största kryptostöld

 

Thanks for noticing

 

The Pope (you know, Francis) recently said that all religions are paths to God. Thanx for noticing, dude! 

Keystone bridge

 

Not Dutton´s most interesting video (and it´s not even the whole thing) and it´s possible that he is being ironic. That being said, the Alt Right´s reactions to the Baltimore bridge disaster have been paranoid or downright retarded.

Russian terrorist attack? *Ukrainian* terrorist attack? DEI? (On a ship registered in Singapore?) Or was the bridge bad because of DEI? It was built in 1977...

I have no idea why the shit happened, but I wouldn´t be surprised if good ol´ capitalist profiteering had something to do with it. But you probably have to be a "Strasserite" to make *that* connection...

Oh, they found containers with hazardous goods. So it´s the Ruzzians, then. Yawn! 

East of Eden

 

Henri Jolicoeur is a Canadian hypnotherapist and practitioner of Yogananda´s version of kriya yoga. As a very young man, he was initiated into the Hare Krishna movement (ISKCON), and although he isn´t entirely negative towards its late founder-leader Prabhupada as a person, he regards the movement itself as a gigantic scam filled with psychopaths, criminals and even murderers. 

In this clip, he tells the weird story of how a Hare Krishna sannyasin (celibate "monk") was allowed by Prabhupada himself to break his woves and marry a rich heiress, apparently hoping that she would bring millions of dollars to the ISKCON organization!

In reality, the woman was an ex-prostitute and scam artist, and it seems *she* fleeced the Hare Krishnas of millions, using her husband as very willing go-between...  

Cancel this, my boy

 

Arjuna: My Lord, Facebook and Twitter has cancelled you, apparently you culturally appropriated the sacred conch of the Baha-Baha-Blaha tribe in Babbalistan! Also, you didn´t pay proper tribute to Azov!!!

Krishna: The fools, I *created* the Baha-Baha-Blaha, and Azov are my dearest Aryan warriors! Now I have to go through all the trouble to punish the Twitterati by re-incarnating them as digital jinns...again.

Stop this...now!

 

If God is real, personal and loves beetles, He should stop this crazed heathens AT ONCE with a thunderbolt or other celestial weapon of his choice!!!

Veckans Kamikaze

*Var* står den här killen politiskt, egentligen? 

Tobias Hübinette om "The Singapore Grip"

Kommunister för frihandel?

En intressant artikel om de geopolitiska intrigerna i Asien och Stilla Havs-området.

Översatt av Flammans redaktion. 

Frihandelsbomb i Sydostasien

How capitalist is Singapore *really*?

Singapore leader Lee together with
Ronnie the Ray Gun himself

A tie-in to the discussion on Singapore on a previous thread:

How capitalist is Singapore really?

Making me wonder what exactly United States capitalistas see in this Chinese paradise? LOL.

Onward, Singapore...or the wet dreams of our local unfriendly capitalistas

Capitalist hero Lee busy building bridges
to Putin´s Russia, here with Medvedev

“The Wit & Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew (1923-2015)” is a collection of short quotes from the writings and speeches of Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, the independent Chinese city-state south of Malaysia. The publisher seems to be Singaporean, but nominally unconnected to the ruling party. The book is difficult to understand unless you have a working knowledge of Singapore´s history and politics. Interestingly, it covers all phases of Lee´s political career: his “socialist” anti-colonialist period, his authoritarian anti-Communist period, and the later liberalization (or supposed liberalization) of the regime. The last quotes in every section often deal with globalism and the new information technology era.

Singapore, while nominally a parliamentary democracy, is a de facto one-party state dominated by the People´s Action Party (PAP) and Lee Kuan Yew himself (until his death in 2015). Since Singapore is considered a capitalist success story, the early “democratic socialist” statements by LKY has to be seen to be believed. His authoritarian statements are surprisingly explicit – no beating around the bush here (in contrast to Communist regimes). Lee openly says that of course the PAP must remain in power, that the only way to rule a Chinese society is by force, stability and economic growth is more important than democracy, indeed, democracy is wrong even in principle since it assumes that all men are equal or can contribute equally to society. 

Lee does have a siege mentality in which Singapore is constantly threatened by its neighbors, by Communism, by communal violence or by a downturn in international trade (Singapore being an important trade hub). Of course, this siege mentality wasn´t entirely irrational, the little city-state having a somewhat precarious geopolitical position. To Lee, the only guarantee of national survival is to keep the PAP strong, pure and willing to use the knuckles if necessary. In return, the people get economic growth, good education and a fight against corruption at all levels. In his later statements, LKY even concedes that Singapore used to be “boring” (this was a state in which you could get arrested for spitting on the pavement) and should instead become an international center for culture and entertainment. The older Lee Kuan Yew, while graciously allowing an Opposition, nevertheless constantly warns the people against voting for it, fearing that a non-PAP government will ruin Singapore in just five years…

Many of the quotes in this little book are standard capitalist sound bites against high taxes and nationalizations, for home ownership and huge wage differentials, complaints about Singaporean workers being lazy, and so on. This from the leader of a party which at least nominally belonged to the Socialist International! More interesting are Lee´s views of immigration and a multi-cultural society. He seems torn between a more nationalist-traditionalist position, and one more in keeping with global capitalism. There are apparently 500,000 foreign guest workers in Singapore (presumably unskilled ones), but the leader assures the people that they won´t stay indefinitely. 

Skilled immigration is explicitly encouraged, however, and use of the English language as a lingua franca is promoted. It seems to have been Lee Kuan Yew´s first language. At the same time, Lee doesn´t believe in an American “melting pot”, but rather a situation in which different ethnic communities live side by side, keeping many of their traditions intact. This would be similar to the multi-culturalist ideal current in the contemporary West. Lee doesn´t seem to like the widespread use of Hokkien, the Chinese dialect actually spoken by the common people in Singapore, but instead promotes Mandarin, the “Standard Chinese” used officially in both the PRC and Taiwan. It´s unclear whether the reason is some kind of Han national pride, or simply pragmatic considerations.

As far as I understand, Lee Kuan Yew was much admired in the United States by the tireless promoters of the eternal blessings of capitalism. This is interesting for many reasons. As already pointed out, Lee was no democrat. Nor was he a nationalist in the sense usually understood by that term (despite Singapore´s break with Malaysia). Is this the state of affairs secretly yearned for by the GOP-ish and business Democrat establishment, an authoritarian multi-cultural society?

With that reflection, I close this discussion of “The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew”.  

Ahem

When Amazon confused the flag of Slovakia with the ditto of Singapore, I had to mock them a bit and posted this...

This is not the country flag of Slovakia. It is, ahem, the ditto of Singapore. Reminds me of a German world exhibition which confused the Czech Republic with Chechnya! Ha ha ha. Not sure how to rate this...